Comics, drawings, photographs and pleasantly musty thoughts from British cartoonist John Bagnall.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Vegetable box art. In the quest for the unsophisticated and the unintentionally odd in graphic design I offer these examples of fruit shop cardboard boxes. I had to snap these screenprinted goodies with my roving camera. First is a broccoli box from Channel Farm, Kinross. As this produce is from Scotland I was happy to read the slogan "Builds Braw Bodies". But can anyone tell me why has the boxes designer included an illustration of a braw female body who looks like Marsha Hunt circa 1969, complete with frizzy afro hairstyle and psychedelic bell-bottoms? And how about the cauliflower box also above? No self-respecting Mac carrying designer would dare go for the anthropomorphic angle these days but here we have a cauli with not only a hideous grin but also disturbingly long eyelashes. I hope this vegetable countenance never visits me in a future nightmare...

2 comments:

My favourite was the badly-drawn skateboarder holding two huge apples. Sadly, I can't recall the name of the grower. When I worked at Morisson's as a kid (until I was sacked for arguing) I must have shifted hundreds of those apple boxes.